(BLAINE) – Many law enforcement officials will tell you that sometimes it’s the smallest things that can make a world of difference when it comes to your child’s safety. Andrea Hunt, Community Outreach Specialist for the Blaine Police Department, knows this first-hand. Along with safety workshops sports clinics, The Safe Kids Anoka County Coalition has been teaching families how to keep kids safe with car seat clinics around the north metro area.
“Once a month we host a car seat clinic, we call them, where we actually inspect people’s installed car seats to make sure they’re installed correctly,” said Hunt. “We try to move ourselves around, so that we make it convenient for anyone in our area to come in and get their car seat inspected.”
“Once a month we host a car seat clinic, we call them, where we actually inspect people’s installed car seats to make sure they’re installed correctly,” said Hunt. “We try to move ourselves around, so that we make it convenient for anyone in our area to come in and get their car seat inspected.”
“Four out of five car seats are not installed properly,” she said. “In order for me to be able to inspect your car seat, I had to go to a week-long certification training, that’s how complicated car seats are and it changes every single day, the technology with car seats, the technology with your vehicle is a constantly changing beast, so in order to know that your car seat is installed correctly, it’s super important to look at your owner’s manual for your vehicle, and also the owner’s manual for your car seat.”
Even if you may have prior experience dealing with car seats, Hunt said that as the technology changes, so does the safety.
“Even from what I saw last year, to this year, (it’s) incredibly different in that these car seats are coming with a lot of side impact protection,” she said. “You’re seeing these real big wings on the car seats because they’re learning that a child is just not developmentally ready to handle that side impact crash; that motion of their head on their little bodies.”
Hunt said the trick to getting it right is to keep it simple and just follow the instructions.
“(Some people are) trying to add and do more thinking that, that will keep the car seat or their child safer, when this is probably the one time that I’m going to say, less is more, that by doing exactly what they tell you to do in that owner’s manual is going to get much further than trying to add things to that seat and putting it in places where we’re not quite sure,” Hunt said.
As Hunt knows from experience, the smallest lessons make all the difference.
“My favorite part is when I have the dad that comes in thinking this is a little bit corny but by the time they leave they’re like, ‘I’m so incredibly glad I did this.’”
The car seat clinic is done by appointment. If you’d like to set something up or learn more, you can visit the Safe Kids Anoka County website.
